Guide to the Jane Kenyon Papers, 1961-1995

Collection number: MC 164
Size: 55 boxes
(19.00 cu.ft.)

About Jane Kenyon (1947-1995)

Jane Kenyon was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on May 23, 1947 and grew up on its
outskirts, on a dirt road opposite a working farm. She went to a one-room
schoolhouse until the fifth grade. At the University of Michigan she majored first
in French and then in English, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1970 and a
Master of Arts degree in English in 1972. That same year she married Donald Hall, whom she had met while a student at the University of
Michigan. In 1975, the couple moved to Eagle Pond Farm in Wilmot, New Hampshire,
Hall's grandparents' place where he had spent childhood summers (see String Too Short To Be Saved). Here they
lived and worked together - "engaged separately in a common enterprise," as Hall
puts it in the afterword to Otherwise - until
Kenyon's death from leukemia on April 22, 1995.

Although Kenyon started to write poetry in junior high school and won an Avery
Hopwood Award for poetry at the University of Michigan in 1969, she said in an
interview that she "didn't really get going" seriously in her work until the move to
Eagle Pond. Her first book, From Room to Room was
published in 1978 by Alice James Books, a poetry cooperative of which she was a
member. She was co-founder and co-editor (with Joyce Peseroff) of Green House, a poetry magazine, from
1976-1980. In 1992 she was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and in 1994 a
PEN/Voelcker Award. She was featured with Hall in the Emmy Award-winning Bill Moyers
special, "A Life Together" At the time of her death
in 1995 she was New Hampshire Poet Laureate.

About the Jane Kenyon Papers

The Jane Kenyon Papers are arranged in fourteen series. The first, and largest,
series (Boxes 1-19) is comprised of manuscript drafts of all of Kenyon’s published
and unpublished poetry and prose. The second series (Boxes 20-25) consists of
correspondence to Kenyon. Series 3 through 5, comprising personal journals,
notebooks, and pocket day-timers, are found in Boxes 26 and 27. Series 6-10 (Boxes
28-35) are made up of materials relating either to projects Kenyon was involved in –
the alicejames poetry cooperative, Green House, the New Hampshire State Council on
the Arts – or to specific areas of her life outside of writing, such as the trips to
India of 1991 and 1993, and her academic experience at the University of Michigan.
Series 13-16 are materials that were added to the collection in 2018. These
materials are comprised of reviews of her works, tributes to Kenyon since her death
and of manuscripts by other writers.

Samples of Kenyon and Hall's work; Poetry
and Prose: The Lively American Arts: A Selected
Bibliography; The Fictions of the
Present, by Larry McCaffery; The
Avant-Garde and Experimental Writing by Henry M.
Sayre

Box 38, Folder 9

Copy of articles suggested as background reading for the USIS
Contemporary American Poetry event featuring Jane Kenyon and Donald
Hall, September 3,
1993

Box 38, Folder 10

Miscellaneous, 1991

Series 10: Subject Files

(4 boxes)

Subseries A: Miscellaneous

Box 38

Box 38, Folder 11

Pocket address book

Box 38, Folder 12

Address book

Box 38, Folder 13

Awards and honors: Ann Arbor High School Diploma, 1965

Box 38, Folder 14

Awards and honors: Proclamation Appointing Her as New
Hampshire Poet Laureate, 1995

Box 38, Folder 15

Awards and honors: Granite State Award, Plymouth State
College, 1995

Box 39

Box 39, Folder 1

Awards and honors: Bachelor of Arts diploma, University of
Michigan, 1970

Box 39, Folder 2

Awards and honors: University of Michigan, 1971

Box 39, Folder 3

Awards and honors: Master of Arts diploma, University of
Michigan, 1972

Hall, Donald, "Bread and Roses," 1975 [Note: Performed Play:
first produced, Power Center, Ann Arbor, MI, February 1975, Music by
William Bolcom.]

Box 43, Folder 3

Hall, Donald, "An Evening Frost" [Note: Performed Play: first
performed 1964, Ann Arbor, MI, Professional Theater Program, University
of Michigan. New York City: Theater de Lys, October 11, 1965 through
early 1966. Also toured the US during 1967; in 1968 by the American
Conservatory Theater on the West Coast. Further productions: 1981,
1982.]

Series 13: Jane's Career

Poems by Jane for University of Michigan for class taught by
Donald Hall

Box 50, Folder 3

Poems by Jane for University of Michigan for class taught by
Donald Hall, with notes by Hall

Box 50, Folder 4

Poems for poetry workshop with Robert Bly,
1970

Box 50, Folder 5

Poems for poetry workshop, 1971

Box 50, Folder 6

Reviews for Jane’s work – From Room to
Room, 1980

Box 50, Folder 7

Reviews for Jane’s work – The Boat of
Quiet Hours, 1987

Box 50, Folder 8

Reviews for Jane’s work – Let evening
come, 1990 - 2006

Box 50, Folder 9

Reviews for Jane’s work – Constance,
1993

Box 50, Folder 10

Reviews for Twenty Poems of Anna
Akhmatova, translated by Jane Kenyon from the
Russian

Box 50, Folder 11

Reviews for Jane’s work – Otherwise,
1996 - 1997

Box 50, Folder 12

Published Poems By Jane 1973 -
1993

Box 50, Folder 13

Reviews for Jane Kenyon's Collected Poems,
2005 -2006

Series 14: Jane's Work

Box 51

Box 51, Folder 1 - 8

Poems: manuscript with edits, edits made by Jane and by an
unidentified person

Box 51, Folder 9

Photocopies of Prose by Jane

Box 51, Folder 10

Photocopies of Prose by Jane, Turnaround
Place

Box 51, Folder 11

Manuscript odds and ends

Box 51, Folder 12

Concord Monitor articles written by Jane

Box 51, Folder 13

Transcriptions of an interview with Jane by David Bradt,
1993

Series 15: Tributes to Jane

Box 52

Box 52, Folder 1

Magazine and newspaper articles, 1995 -
2000

Box 52, Folder 2

Hopkins Center Dartmouth College, Benita Valelnte performs poems
by Jane that were set to music 1996

Box 52, Folder 3

University of Michigan Ann Arbor; University Musical Society with
Benita Valente and Cynthia Raim 1996

Box 52, Folder 4

Magazine article in an Issue of Columbia,
"A Tribute to Jane Kenyon"1996

Box 52, Folder 5

Tributes to Jane in poems and prose by others
1996

Box 52, Folder 6

The story about the creation of Briefly It
Enters

Box 52, Folder 7

Newspaper and Magazine articles with revues of Briefly It Enters,
1996

Box 52, Folder 8

Newspaper and Magazine articles with revues of Briefly It Enters,
1996

Box 52, Folder 9

A few publications that contain Jane's work

Box 52, Folder 10

"Don and Jane in the Bubble"

Series 16: Miscellaneous

Box 53

Box 53, Folder 1

Writings by Nancy Jay Crumbine

Box 53, Folder 2

Writings by Kate Jones

Box 53, Folder 3

Writings by Alice Mattison

Box 53, Folder 4

Writings by Alice Mattison

Box 53, Folder 5

Writings by Alice Mattison

Box 53, Folder 6

Writings by Alice Mattison

Box 53, Folder 7

Writings by Mike Pride

Box 53, Folder 8

Writings by Joyce Peseroff

Box 53, Folder 9

Writings by others

Box 53, Folder 10

Copies and manuscript notes for paper delivered at Colby-Sawyer
College

Box 53, Folder 11

Workshop poems with notations

Box 54

Box 54, Folder 1

Information on Jane's trip to Russia with "Bridges for Peace"
1988

Box 54, Folder 2

Information on trip to India,
1991

Box 54, Folder 3

Information on trip to India,
1993

Box 54, Folder 4

Information on Satyagraha Ashram

Box 54, Folder 5

Information on Gandhi

Box 54, Folder 6

Information on Harijian Ashram

Box 54, Folder 7

Motilal Banarsidass check list,
1990

Box 54, Folder 8

Graywolf Press Catalogs, 1993 -
1999

Box 54, Folder 9

miscellaneous correspondence

Box 54, Folder 10

Miscellaneous

Box 54, Folder 11

Royalty reports

Box 54, Folder 12-13

Additions by Donald Hall

Drafts of poems, drawings, a notebook, etc. sent to UNH by Donald Hall after Jane's death with a note of explanation of the materials.

Box 55

Box 55, Folder 1

Slides from trip to India

Box 55, Folder 2

Photographs:of Jane, Don Hall and others; most taken from
correspondence

Audio Visual materials:

Cassette: Jane Kenyon reading her poetry,
1987

Master VHS: Jane Kenyon A Celebration of Her Life and Works,
Oct 26, 1995

VHS: Jane Kenyon Poerty Reading, 2005

Compact Disc: Jane Kenyon A Celebration of Her Life and Works,
Oct 26, 1995

Compact Disc: Jane Kenyon Poems to a Listener,
1990

Series 16: Oversized Materials

Map Drawer A7

Three 11x30" poster board broadsides used in the Poetry in Motion project on public
transport: "Who" by Jane Kenyon (2 copies) and Anna Akhmatova's "Yes I
loved them, those grand gatherings at night, -" translated by Jane
Kenyon.